Sunday, 15 December 2013

Much ado about South Africa's snub

Nigeria was the first African
country the late Nelson Mandela visited after his release from prison in 1990.
The front-line states apart, which had no choice in the matter, Nigeria was far
and away his most generous supporter, a fact he was merely acknowledging. On
his previous visit three decades earlier, the Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu
Bello, had given him £10,000 to help prosecute the armed struggle that would
land him 27 years. Only Tunisia, with half that amount, along with Liberia and
Guinea, put their hands in their pockets. He never even got to meet Ghana’s
Kwame Nkrumah, the self-styled pan-Africanist. In the years that followed, Nigeria
worked tirelessly to isolate the ‘racist regime’, even nationalising two
British concerns – Barclays Bank and British Petroleum – for trading with them.
Countless black South Africans were given scholarships to come and study here.
By all accounts, they lived well.

The fairy tale happened. Four years
after his second visit, Mandela became president of a free, democratic South
Africa. Now he is dead and his Nigerian counterpart was snubbed at his memorial
service which netted the most heads of state and government in the history of
the world. Pride of place was given to America, whose CIA provided
the intelligence that led to his capture, and our former ‘colonial master’,
whose concerns we are now frantically un-nationalising,
wasn’t far behind. Nigeria didn’t figure, which is to say that nobody even noticed
us amid the celebrations of a life well lived. America shook hands with Cuba,
which everybody agreed was in the spirit of the great man’s legacy; America,
Britain and Denmark took a ‘selfie’ which went viral as everyone wondered whether
Michelle was pouting or smiling, Denmark being very pretty; and Israel and Iran
didn’t attend for all sorts of complicated reasons to do with the real politick
that had condemned Mandela to a long stretch in the first place.

Shortly before his death, having
‘stepped aside’ after just one term (Jonathan, please note), Mandela professed
himself disappointed with us in an interview he granted one of our diplomats:
‘You know I am not very happy with Nigeria. I have made that very clear on many
occasions,’ he fumed, before launching into a broadside (of which the following
is only part):

Your leaders have no respect for their people. They believe
that their personal interests are the interests of the people. They take
people’s resources and turn it into personal wealth. There is a level of
poverty in Nigeria that should be unacceptable. I cannot understand why
Nigerians are not more angry than they are… What do young Nigerians think about
your leaders and their country and Africa? Do you teach them history? Do you
have lessons on how your past leaders stood by us and gave us large amounts of
money? You know I hear from Angolans and Mozambicans and Zimbabweans how your
people opened their hearts and their homes to them. I was in prison then, but
we know how your leaders punished western companies who supported Apartheid.

As our very own IBB said (as who
should know?), ‘Mandela had a moral conviction and his
moral conducts was very, very high and powerful,’ only a pity that he himself failed
to exhibit these fine qualities when he truncated the very democracy for which his
hero had endured the unspeakable; had, indeed, looted ‘people’s resources’ which he had
turned ‘into personal wealth’, for instance the missing N12.2bn oil windfall when America invaded
Iraq, a war which Mandela called them on: ‘Why does the United States behave so
arrogantly... Their friend Israel has got weapons of mass destruction but
because its [sic] their ally they won't ask the UN to get rid of it. They just
want the (Iraqi) oil... We must expose this as much as possible.’

But this is the world of real politick
where presidents do not willingly step aside, which was what made Mandela
unique, and not only in Africa, and why so many wanted to be counted (even
taking photos of each other), including Nigeria, which had opened its heart and
home – and its bank account – to the cause this man was ready to die for, the
same man who told our intrepid diplomat what we all know: ‘The world will not
respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world
need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence. Nigerians love
freedom and hate oppression. Why do you do it to yourselves?’ Why indeed? And
what are we going to do about it? The obvious answer would seem to be to do
what Mandela himself did when faced with a minority regime which was just as
blind, as deaf and as dumb to the majority they were oppressing but which, when
all said and done, at least built an economy that now gives the country mouth
to talk anyhow to Nigeria. Would that we had done the same with the wherewithal we
distributed so generously.

Nor is South Africa alone in its
contempt for the ‘giant of Africa’. Another much-quoted article pointed out
that Liberia had earlier done the same when they elected the first woman
president in the continent at the expense of ‘Nigerian limbs’, before letting
rip against the ‘fifty something other ungrateful
lepers across the continent’ who ‘have been beneficiaries of the bottomless pit
of petrobillions of Abuja...only to run to Washington, London...to give
thanks’. And how they shone! America kept ‘Madiba’ on the terrorist list until after
his presidency. These days, they water-board ‘terrorists’ without due process
– ‘We, too, must act on behalf of justice’ – and drone children in Pakistan
every Tuesday – ‘We, too, must act on behalf of peace’.

Maybe
one day we will wake up to the world of real politick, just like Mandela asked
us to, being himself not like that.

Adewale
Maja-Pearce is the author of several books, including Loyalties
and Other Stories, In My Father's Country, How many miles to Babylon?, A
Mask Dancing, Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?, From Khaki to Agbada,
Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa and Other Essays, A Peculiar Tragedy, and
Counting the Cost, as well as the 1998 and 1999 annual reports on human
rights violations in Nigeria. He also edited The Heinemann Book of African
Poetry in English, Wole Soyinka: An Appraisal, Christopher Okigbo:
Collected Poems, The New Gong Book of New Nigerian Short Stories,